Human Dreams
Humans dreams can be entertaining, disturbing, or downright bizarre. We all dream -- even if we don't remember it the next day. But why do we dream? And what do dreams mean, anyway?
Dreams are basically stories and images our mind creates while we sleep. Dreams can be vivid. They can make you feel happy, sad, or scared. And, they may seem confusing or perfectly rational.
Dreams can occur anytime during sleep. But, the most vivid dreams occur during deep REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, when the brain is most active. Some experts say we dream at least four to six times per night. However, people only remember about five percent of their dreams.
There are many theories about why we dream, but no one knows for sure. Some researchers say dreams have no purpose or meaning and are nonsensical activities of the sleeping brain. Others say dreams are necessary for mental, emotional, and physical health.
Studies have shown the importance of dreams to our health and well-being. In one study, researchers woke subjects just as they were drifting off into REM sleep. They found that those who were not allowed to dream experienced: increased tension, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, lack of coordination, weight gain, and a tendency to hallucinate.
Many experts say that dreams exist to: help solve problems in our lives, incorporate memories and process emotions.
If a person goes to bed with a troubling thought, that person may wake with a solution or at least feel better about the situation.
Sigmund Freud believed dreams are a window into our subconscious. He believed they reveal a person's unconscious desires, thoughts and motivations. Also, Freud thought dreams were a way for people to satisfy urges and desires that were unacceptable to society.
Perhaps there is merit with all these theories. Some dreams may help our brains process our thoughts and the events of the day. Others may just be the result of normal brain activity and mean very little, if anything. Researchers are still trying to figure out exactly why we dream.
Animal's Dreams
Scientists are taking a closer look at slumbering cats, rats, and even cuttlefish to find out what happens when they are sleeping. One study found that rats map out navigational routes to get food during rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep.
It is uncertain whether animals dream, but “it seems very likely" says Hugo Spiers, an experimental psychologist at University College London. Spiers and colleagues have found that when lab rats are shown food and then go to sleep, certain cells in their brains seemed to map out how to get to the food, according to a study published in June in the journal eLife.
In people, dreaming occurs during rapid-eye movement or REM sleep, which most mammals also experience. So, "it is reasonable to suppose that animals have something like what we call dreams," says Patrick McNamara, director of the Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory at Boston University. McNamara notes that in 1959, French neuroscientist Michel Jouvet and his team altered cat brains to disable the mechanism that inhibits movement during REM sleep. The sleeping cats raised their heads, suggesting they were watching unseen objects; arched their backs; and appeared to stalk prey and get in fights. Cats likely see images during deep sleep, though they may not be dreams as we know them. All of these behaviors suggest cats were seeing images during REM, McNamara says, though we can’t say for sure if they were dreaming like humans do.
In another sleep study published in 2001 in the journal Neuron, scientists compared the brain patterns of rats running through a maze with their brain patterns during REM sleep afterward. The scientists, Michael Wilson and Kenway Louie of MIT, found the brain patterns were so similar they could tell what part of the maze about which the rats were "dreaming". The study fits with the idea that physical spaces, like the maze, "are encoded into long-term memory during REM sleep,” McNamara says.
Do cephalopods, a group that includes squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish, dream too? “It’s possible, it all depends on your definition of dreaming", Spiers says. For instance, cuttlefish exhibit a sleep-like state accompanied by color changes, twitching, and rapid eye movements similar to REM sleep, according to a 2012 study in the journal PLoS ONE.
Daydreams
Daydreaming is often a disregarded and neglected aspect of dream study because they are often overlooked as fleeting and wandering thoughts. There is a lack of emphasis on the content of your daydreams. However, the meanings to your nightly dream symbols are also applicable to your daydreams. The content in your daydreams are also helpful to the understanding of your true feelings and in fulfilling your goals.
Daydreaming occurs when you are semi-awake. It is the spontaneous imagining or recalling of various images or experiences in the past or future. You allow your imagination to run away from you. When you daydream, you are accessing your right brain, which is the creative side of your personality.
Daydreams are often viewed as light-hearted in nature. They are just silly fantasies and wishful thinking. Actually, even worrying over things can be classified as a form of daydreaming. When a person worries, that person is visualizing an unwanted or negative outcome to a situation. By repeating these negative images in the mind, a person is more likely to make it happen. The solution is to try to think of a positive outcome and to plan ways to deal with stress.
Just as your worrisome daydreams can unwittingly come true via repetition in your mind, a person can use it as a tool to your advantage and make positive events happen. You can utilize daydreams as a technique to visualize what you want and hope to happen. It is said that many athletes, musicians and business leaders utilize daydreams to envision success. Anyone can utilize daydreams for something as simple as studying for and acing the next test or for landing a job.
Positive daydreaming is healthy. It serves as a temporary escape from the demands of reality. It is also a good way to release pent up frustrations without physically acting them out. All too often we all worry about a job, the family, finances, a relationship, etc. It is a way to leave the world behind and ponder about what could've been or should have been. It relieves stress, improves attitude, fosters creativity and refresh the mind, body and spirit.
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Images and Quotes about Dreams
An Image Only Possible in a Dream
We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.-William Shakespeare
I close my eyes, then I drift away, into the magic night I softly say a silent prayer, like dreamers do, then I fall asleep to dream my dreams of you. - Roy Orbison
All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible. - T. E. Lawrence
To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe. - Anatole France
Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended. - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
An Image Only Possible in a Dream
Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? - Leonardo da Vinci
Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. - Gloria Steinem
Nothing happens unless first we dream. - Carl Sandburg
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. - Jack Kerouac
The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind. - Sigmund Freud
An Image Only Possible in a Dream
Nothing happens unless first we dream. - Carl Sandburg
One of the most adventurous things left us is to go to bed. For no one can lay a hand on our dreams. - E. V. Lucas
Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dreams are the touchstones of our character. - Henry David Thoreau
Yesterday is but today's memory, and tomorrow is today's dream. - Khalil Gibran